


call it off

by sarken



Category: Real News RPF
Genre: Current TV Era, Gen, TSP Comment Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2012-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarken/pseuds/sarken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel gets a phone call in the middle of the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	call it off

Rachel's phone wakes her out of a sound sleep, and she grabs for it as she sits up in bed, answering without checking the ID. "Yeah?" she says. She cares less about who is calling than about letting Susan sleep.

There's silence on the other end. It's long enough she thinks she might hang up, but it's the middle of the night. There are very few reasons to call and even fewer people who would. So she waits. 

"Rach." 

His voice hits her hard. She hasn't heard it in more than a year; isn't sure she expected to ever again. He sounds exactly the same, though, and it hurts.

"Rach, I'm in trouble."

She glances at Susan and closes her eyes. "Keith." His name feels foreign on her tongue and she swallows hard, ready to start again. "Keith," she says, straining for a joke, "Keith, I swear, if you're calling to tell me you're pregnant..."

It doesn't get a laugh. "They're going to fire me."

There's a thickness to his voice, a heaviness she first thought was sleep. Now she knows it's not. "You're drunk."

"I thought I could make it work."

Rachel throws back the blanket and plants her feet on the floor. "I can't hear this," she says, but that's not what she means. "I can't do this. _You_ can't do this."

Susan rolls over and mumbles in her sleep.

"They've been trying for months."

"You can't just call me with this at" -- she grabs her alarm clock and squints -- "you can't just call me with this at three o'clock in the morning like it hasn't been over a year."

"They wouldn't let me hire you."

The blood rushes out of her head. It makes her dizzy, makes her world spin. 

"It wasn't supposed to be like this."

Rachel wants to cry. She wants to yell or throw things or tell him to go to hell because he's drunk and it's 3:00 AM and it's been a year and he's right: It wasn't supposed to be like this. 

But Susan is sleeping beside her and it's 3:00 AM and it _is_ like this, so she takes a breath and closes her eyes. "No," she says, sliding her finger toward  End. "No, it wasn't."


End file.
